North Carolina Should Pay for 1898 Race Riot

By Mike Baker, Associated Press, Washington Post, 1 June
2006

RALEIGH, N.C.—A state-appointed commission is urging North
Carolina to provide reparations for the 1898 racial violence that
sparked an exodus of more than 2,000 black residents from Wilmington.

The 500-page report that was produced after six years of study also
said the violence, which killed as many as 60 people, was not a
spontaneous riot but rather the nation's only recorded coup
d'etat.

“There is no amount of money that can repair what happened years
ago and compensate for the loss of lives and the loss of
property,” said vice chairman Irving Joyner, a professor at
N.C. Central School of Law. The commission did not provide any cost
estimates, although compensation advocate Larry Thomas of Chapel Hill
estimated that the economic losses calculated today are
“probably in the billions of dollars.”

Along with compensation to victims' descendants, the commission
also recommended incentives for minority small businesses and help for
minority home ownership. It also recommended that the history of the
incident be taught in public schools.

State Rep. Thomas Wright, a Democrat who helped establish and chair
the panel, said the next step is to file a bill in the Legislature
with the recommendations. That won't happen before 2007 because
the filing deadline for this session has passed.

The 1898 violence began when white vigilantes, resentful after years
of black and Republican political rule during Reconstruction, burned
the printing press of a black newspaper publisher, Alexander
Manly. Violence spread, resulting in an exodus of 2,100 blacks, the
commission concluded. Then the largest city in the state, Wilmington
flipped from a black majority to a white majority in the months that
followed.

Before the violence, which led to a Democratic takeover from
Republicans and Populists, black men in North Carolina had been able
to vote for about three decades. But Democrats quickly passed voter
literacy tests and a grandfather clause, which disenfranchised black
voters until the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

“The growth of Wilmington was stunted as a result of what
happened in 1898,” Joyner said. “Wilmington has never
recovered economically, socially or politically.” Wilmington
likely became a “catalyst” for the violent white
supremacist movement around the country, with other states taking
note, said Lerae Umfleet, the state's lead researcher.

“Jim Crow had passed in a few other states,” Umfleet
said. “But the whole white supremacy campaign in North Carolina
was watched around the country.People built on what happened in
Wilmington.”

Some previous historical accounts had portrayed the incident as
spontaneous, although more recently, historians have described it as a
coup d’etat.

“This sets the record straight,” Wright said. “Now
there is an official document confirming this part of North
Carolina's—and America's—history. Nowhere in the
United States has a legitimate government ever been overthrown.”